Blue Dragon Plus

Blue Dragon Plus

Nintendo DS gamers are well served with role-playing games, but not all carry the same prestige as this latest from Ignition Entertainment.

The original Blue Dragon came exclusively to Xbox 360 in 2007 with much fanfare from Microsoft, but only lukewarm reception from the public. Its creators comprise artists responsible for the acclaimed Final Fantasy series, most notably director Hironobu Sakaguchi and artist Akira Toriyama famed for his Dragon Ball characters. This same team, which also includes Final Fantasy composer Tetsuya Nomura, has now produced Blue Dragon Plus for Nintendo DS – an entirely different animal.

Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 benefited from lush 3D visuals and dazzling special effects. Of course you’re never going to replicate this on DS however Sakaguchi and the gang are on familiar ground here since their finest hours were in the mid / late 1990s on Nintendo’s Super NES console. Hence the visuals are very charming on DS, and similarly the music has retro-remix appeal. Minus the glitz a strong storyline becomes essential and in this respect the game excels. But whereas Blue Dragon for Xbox 360 was designed to attract non gamers as much as the role-playing fan base, for DS the team has chosen a relatively strict Strategy RPG approach.

You won’t need to have played Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 to appreciate the key roles in BD Plus. The general story begins one year after events in the original game, and there are multiple storylines threading through the plot relating to each character. Your enemy is the evil Nene and his army of ‘Destroys’ aiming to bring down the hapless King Jibral’s newly reinstated empire. Our hero is little Shu, a boy and his pet dragon – or rather his Shadow Soul, which is loosely similar in concept to the daemons in Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ books.

The Shadow Souls are the stars of the show, and during battle they break out in impressive 3D to wrangle with enemies. All members of your party have a Shadow to assist them, and can recruit others depending on their level of experience. This can become quite strategic as each Shadow represents a certain class – i.e. Healing, White Magic, Black Magic and so on. The new ‘mecha’ theme also introduces robot companions that can be customised to suit your battle needs.

We were impressed by the terrain-based battle system, on homage to the celebrated Final Fantasy Tactics from Square Enix. In particular the specialist Skill system makes way for some frantic mini-games to break up the real-time strategy action. Since your party can include up to 16 members the screen can get very busy, but there’s never a sign of graphical glitch.

Blue Dragon Plus is unfailingly stylish and impressive to watch. Our main reservation is that you rarely feel challenged enough to break into a sweat. Also there are many occasions where the touch-screen interface isn’t accurate enough to direct the action exactly as you’d like – accidentally highlighting the wrong character or move.

Quirks aside, Blue Dragon Plus is as classy as we’d hoped to find and deserves to find its way onto any holidaymaker’s play list this summer.

4 out of 5